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Salary expectations questions – How should you answer them? (2020)

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Re: Salary expectations questions – How should you answer them? (2020)

#11

Post by borplk »

wordofx wrote: post #7
dijit wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Third-Party Recruiters are actually great, they're super expensive for the company who you hire through, but they're the only people motivated to make sure it's a good fit and are neutral on it. You'd expect that they would be incentivised to place you somewhere bad so that you're a repeat customer, but there's something that seems to make this not true, perhaps reputation?

Recruiters only get paid if a candidate stays beyond a period of time. If the candidate does not work out the recruiter needs to find a replacement. Recruiters won’t deal with shit people because if they don’t stay or are prone to not working out they are a burden. In terms of money it’s usually a percentage of the salary. So if the recruiter works on 10% then they have incentive to get you as much money as possible.

It's quite logical to think that they have an incentive to get you as much money as possible but in reality it's often not quite correct. Their stronger incentive is to establish a relationship with a business and to continue feeding them candidates at an attractive price point for the business. The marginal amount of extra commission that they make on your increased salary is not that significant.

Re: Salary expectations questions – How should you answer them? (2020)

#12

Post by throwaway5752 »

dijit wrote: post #5
throwaway8754aw wrote: post #2

I tell recruiters what I want to make from the beginning (my first reply to them on LinkedIn or wherever they reach out) yet say that's what I'm making now ..how competitive is this opportunity? Either they can match or increase it. If they can the conversation continues and the pay is set in stone never to be discussed again thru all interview processes.

Third-Party Recruiters are actually great, they're super expensive for the company who you hire through, but they're the only people motivated to make sure it's a good fit and are neutral on it. You'd expect that they would be incentivised to place you somewhere bad so that you're a repeat customer, but there's something that seems to make this not true, perhaps reputation?

"You'd expect that they would be incentivised to place you somewhere bad so that you're a repeat customer"

You answered your own question: "they're super expensive for the company who you hire through"

The person that pays the recruiter money is their customer. The item their customers pay for is the recruiter's product, which is you.

So the recruiter's reputation does matters to acquire additional inventory, but it matters more for their actual customers. Selling bad fits to their actual customer, the hiring companies, would be business-ending.

It is so important to understand when you are the product and when you are the customer.

Re: Salary expectations questions – How should you answer them? (2020)

#13

Post by eastbound »

The real important question is the subsequent one:

— What are your salary expectations?

— $X

— Ok! That means if we propose Y, would you envision it?

— Yeah, maybe, because I’m out of choice / No because I already have an offer at $X-1.

Source: I’m hiring (and yes, Y enters into consideration because most candidates overestimate their skills, but I always go for X if the candidate is as expected).

Re: Salary expectations questions – How should you answer them? (2020)

#14

Post by scarface_74 »

wordofx wrote: post #7
dijit wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Third-Party Recruiters are actually great, they're super expensive for the company who you hire through, but they're the only people motivated to make sure it's a good fit and are neutral on it. You'd expect that they would be incentivised to place you somewhere bad so that you're a repeat customer, but there's something that seems to make this not true, perhaps reputation?

Recruiters only get paid if a candidate stays beyond a period of time. If the candidate does not work out the recruiter needs to find a replacement. Recruiters won’t deal with shit people because if they don’t stay or are prone to not working out they are a burden. In terms of money it’s usually a percentage of the salary. So if the recruiter works on 10% then they have incentive to get you as much money as possible.

The incentive is not to make sure you get the most money. The incentive is to make sure you get placed fast.

While $200K vs $220K means a lot to you over the course of your job, they aren’t going to risk losing a placement arguing for you to get $20K more so their firm can get $44K instead of $40k and the recruiter themselves can get maybe 60% of what the firm gets.

There was a famous similar study published in Freakonomics about real estate agents.

https://freakonomics.com/2008/02/real-estate-agents-revisite...

Re: Salary expectations questions – How should you answer them? (2020)

#15

Post by AlotOfReading »

SoftTalker wrote: post #8
dijit wrote: post #4

Unless you end up with someone like me who has a budget and always pays the max. I usually ask "what do you expect to be paid" to understand if I'll make them happy or sad when discussing what I'll actually offer. This is not foolproof and has caused some issues with people coming in as very good negotiators and thinking my inability to budge is because I'm being hard-line, when in reality it's because- as mentioned,…

I think salary + performance bonus is generally a good way to go. I've only had one job that did that. The base salary wasn't remarkable but there was a bonus that had a component that was calculated based on the overall performance of the company that year, and a component that recognized individual performance. So everyone got a bonus, but high performers got more. You used to see bonus compensation in most financi…

A former employer did 40% bonuses. It made for a nice holiday surprise even when they decided "the company didn't meet expectations" and gave everyone half bonus. Eventually they decided to "align with market expectations" and coincidentally started hemorrhaging staff.

Re: Salary expectations questions – How should you answer them? (2020)

#16

Post by romanows »

slwvx wrote: post #9

Stacey Vanek Smith wrote "Machiavelli for Women". She said in radio interviews about the book that she wanted to put in the book the suggestion that if an interviewer asks what you make, an interviewee should reply with the real value plus 10%. Apparently legal people at her publisher did not allow her to put this in the book. I think it's reasonable to ask what an interviewee expects to make, but not reasonable to a…

That's fascinating, I wonder why that suggestion would be any more dangeous than any other advice. Too bad she didn't just put in a footnote describing why she can't suggest asking for 10% more.

Re: Salary expectations questions – How should you answer them? (2020)

#17

Post by phil21 »

romanows wrote: post #16
slwvx wrote: post #9

Stacey Vanek Smith wrote "Machiavelli for Women". She said in radio interviews about the book that she wanted to put in the book the suggestion that if an interviewer asks what you make, an interviewee should reply with the real value plus 10%. Apparently legal people at her publisher did not allow her to put this in the book. I think it's reasonable to ask what an interviewee expects to make, but not reasonable to a…

That's fascinating, I wonder why that suggestion would be any more dangeous than any other advice. Too bad she didn't just put in a footnote describing why she can't suggest asking for 10% more.

Lying about this these days seems rather risky to me. Some employers may not care, but some will.

The Worknumber product from ADP (and it's equiv from Paychex) covers a vast range of white collar employees. Perhaps most.

Your new employer has a very good chance of seeing precisely what your current salary is down to the paycheck level going back years to even verify raises and title changes.

Replying with what you require to make to take the job seems like a much safer bet to me.

Re: Salary expectations questions – How should you answer them? (2020)

#18

Post by Uehreka »

Apreche wrote: post #10

I don’t know if this is the best advice, but here’s what I tell prospective employers that ask for my compensation expectations. I tell them I live in NYC, and with my current compensation I can comfortably afford the preposterous rent.

It’s very cool that you can get away with that.

Re: Salary expectations questions – How should you answer them? (2020)

#19

Post by voytec »

I've talked to several recruiters and HR people who were prepared for quite a different answer than I gave to this question.

I got the feeling that several interviews were carried out afterwards out of politeness or because the recruiter "had to" do it, but the interview ended before it began. Than, there's either ghosting or almost immediate (like up to an hour past the interview) copy-paste email along the lines of "we decided to go with another candidate".

A few recruiters however were open that they've checked the salary for similar position in my country's capital city (Warsaw) and it's much lower than what I'm asking. Pointing out 20+ years of experience and listing accomplishments seems less important for a lot of businesses, than paying as little as possible.

I got a few links to these "check salary for [level] [position] in [city]" websites from recruiters. All these seem to be crafted in a way that undervalues employees by artificially lowering country-wide salaries to ridiculous levels.

Re: Salary expectations questions – How should you answer them? (2020)

#20

Post by analognoise »

phil21 wrote: post #17
romanows wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's fascinating, I wonder why that suggestion would be any more dangeous than any other advice. Too bad she didn't just put in a footnote describing why she can't suggest asking for 10% more.

Lying about this these days seems rather risky to me. Some employers may not care, but some will. The Worknumber product from ADP (and it's equiv from Paychex) covers a vast range of white collar employees. Perhaps most. Your new employer has a very good chance of seeing precisely what your current salary is down to the paycheck level going back years to even verify raises and title changes. Replying with what you re…

You can opt out of that I think, can’t you?

Might be wise to do before you interview.

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